Need help with Sony MZ1

I have a Sony MZ1 Mini Disc Pro recorder with all the bells and whistles. Well what I trying to do is to transfer songs from a CD to the MZ1 via my Toshiba Laptop which also has an Optical Out port on it.  The port does work as I get a small optical red light on the other end.

My problem here is when I did the transfer/recording from the laptop to the MZ1 it did record (well I hope so) but when I went to play back the MZ1 to listen onto the headphones I got no sound.

Questions

1. With Optical recording, do I need to set/adjust the Rec Level on the MZ1 MD player/recorder ?

2. Is Optical just a pure direct transfer meaning I should not really adjust anything ?

Thanks

Hi thansk for your jelp, apparently the Optical out on my laprop is a variable out and not fixed and the level was turned down, I have finally fixed the problem.Still learning the aspects of MD and so far loving it but its a very pro tool to use, very different to mp3